Colleen on a Plane

My flight from St. Louis to Kansas City went really well. It was only 43 minutes long. Most of the time, I listened to my iPod and tried to avoid the skeazy salesman two seats down that was trying peddle his wears to the other businessman sitting next to me. I got a window seat, so that was cool.

It was the first time I ever flew on Southwest. I was pleasantly surprised. I guess since they’re so inexpensive I thought that it would be more cattle-call and bare bones than other airlines I’ve flown. The staff was really friendly and the planes were nice, too. I wish I would have had one of the new wifi planes, but oh well!

When I got to KC, I was very confused. I had never been to the airport there before. Apparently they have separate security for every set of 4 gates. So even though I had gone through security in S. Louis, I had to leave security, walk 30 fee to the next set of gates, and go through security again. I wish I would have known this before rearranging my bags for optimum access after the first round of checks. This means that I had moved my little baggy of toiletries to the bottom of my bag. So when I got to security, I had to pull all my junk out of the bag, take off my shoes, etc. The people behind me probably were really happy about that.

My flight to Seattle was much less eventful. Some mean guy ran me over in the aisle while I tried to put my suitcase in the overhead bin. I guess he REALLY wanted a window seat. I had an aisle seat – kind of a bummer because I would have loved to see the scenery, but also nice to have the leg room.

In Seattle at Last

Katie came and picked me up and we went to a hotel room that was gifted to her as a late birthday gift. Then, we headed out to meet Ryan for dinner in Upper Queen Anne – a hip neighborhood of Seattle near a college. Ryan is one of my boyfriend’s college friends. He is from Chicago and has been living in Seattle for a couple years. I haven’t seen him probably in about 3 years, so it was really nice to hang out with him.

We drove by downtown Seattle and Pike’s Place market on the way there. The sun was setting over the Puget Sound and it was absolutely gorgeous.

Katie, Ryan and I ate at a local restaurant called 74^th Street Ale House. It was delicious. I had blackened salmon, Ryan had ahi tuna and Katie had “the best burger ever.” After dinner, Ryan took us to this place that overlooked the Puget Sound and all of Seattle. We got to check out the city lights. Finally we stopped at this hilarious drive-in place called Burger Master. It looked like it was built in the 70s and hadn’t been remodeled or updated one bit since it opened. But the crazy part was that everything was in really nice condition.

What surprised me most about Seattle was that the city was so hilly! All of the buildings and houses are packed on to these hills and the streets wind around every which way. Everything had a distinct “Seattle patina.” The houses were all sorts of crazy dark colors – think brick red, dark brown, mustard yellow, sage green – with lighter trim. Lots of things were kind of weathered and rusty, but in a charming way. I wish I could have stayed a little longer to explore!